Archive for the ‘Writing and Publishing a Book’ Category

Coming out with a book is no walk in the park (it’s a lot of hard work actually) so my suggestion is if it isn’t really your lifelong dream and if you don’t like books and writing that much, don’t even start the process. It can get pretty stressful.

Atty. Alex Lacson is the best-selling author of the book 12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do To Help Our Country. Prior to my working on the book Mom’s A Stewardess, I did not know him personally. Well, I found out that he was also a parishioner at our parish and that one of my friends from the parish knew him, but that was about it.

Ms. Rica Bolipata Santos, Philippine Star columnist and award-winning writer and author of the book Love, Desire, Children, etc. is the editor of my book Mom’s A Stewardess. I was a bit intimidated before I met her personally because as I read more about her, the more I felt that she was so stellar. =)

If you are a relatively new or unknown author or writer, your book can benefit from having known people or writers come up with a testimonial or endorsement of your book. Doing this, however, will entail costs and time.

When you come out with or publish your book, chances are you will need to scout for an artist who can give your book cover or pages of your book the look and feel that you want. In the case of the Mom’s A Stewardess book, I knew I wanted the drawings to be colorful to catch the attention of prospective readers and also to give the book a “light look.”

When I was discussing months ago with my publisher about our book project, my publisher suggested that I stop reading other books too much. Reading too many similar books, while easier for the writer in terms of possibly generating new or related ideas, might lead to the writer “being influenced” by other writers.

What’s the typical print run for a book here in the Philippines? Through the whole process of writing my book and getting Claretian Publications to publish it, I learned that for publishing a book to be economical or to at least make some financial sense, you need to print a minimum of 1,000 copies.

If you are a first-time writer for a book, it makes good sense to get an editor for your book. If you are the writer, chances are, you are too close to your work that you may think something is quite understandable when it is not; you may also not readily notice mistakes and typos since you know what to expect (you wrote the material and re-read it several times) and chances are, even if there were mistakes, you would still read it perfectly since you already have the words in your brain or in your head.